The Legend of Tyoga Weathersby (33 page)

The jog through the woods brought Tyoga back to life.

The fresh, clean morning air filled his lungs and he felt his spirit soar as the power of Wahaya filled his blood with the call of the wild.

He had only traveled about half a mile when he spotted the marauding pack in an open glade under a stand of willow trees. Stopping short, Tyoga ducked behind a moss-covered boulder wedged between two large pines.

He and Walks Alone didn’t have a chance to see how many Shawnee braves were chasing them. This was the first time he was able to get a good look at his pursuers.

He counted nine warriors. All them were in their late teens or early twenties. Their faces were painted with the black and okra pigments of battle. They wore the leather leggings and breech clothes of deep woods warriors.

They were not outfitted to take prisoners, but to murder and defile.They carried full quivers of arrows and hickory long bows. Some had war clubs and others had iron-head tomahawks.

It was obvious that the Shawnee had figured out that Tyoga and Walks Alone had somehow eluded capture. They had stopped in the open glade to discuss their next course of action.

Tyoga couldn’t hear the braves’ conversation because they were just out of earshot. It was too risky to try to get any closer, so he hunkered down and waited to see what they would do next. He was certain that they would double back to see if they could pick up his tracks. When that happened, they would be coming in his direction.

The quiet of the dawn was suddenly shattered by the long, lonely howl of Wahaya-Wacon. The cry of the wolf was subdued and the tenor muted to convey a sadness that was palpable. It filled the morning mist with a pall of barren aloneness that stifled the Shawnee’s conversation and quieted all of the morning birds.

Tyoga knew that Wahaya was calling him back to the cave.
Something must be wrong.

Upon hearing the wolf, the Shawnee ducked down where they stood in an attempt to conceal themselves as best they could.

Taking advantage of the diversion, Tyoga slowly backed away from his hiding place. In ten carefully placed steps, he was beyond the Shawnees’ line of sight. Turning toward the mouth of the cave, Tyoga ran as fast and quietly as he could toward the howl of Wahaya.

When he arrived at the entrance to the hollow, Wahaya was nowhere to be seen. Afraid of alerting the Shawnee to his whereabouts, he called out no louder than in his normal speaking voice, “Wahaya. Wahaya, lo ta tok talo?”

Bending at the waist to enter the cave, he looked down to see Sunlei’s leather amulet lying atop a smooth, round boulder ringed by rainbow ferns. It was the amulet that went missing from the campsite on the top of Old Mount Rag.

Tyoga knelt to pick it up.

Smiling toward the West, he whispered to the wind, “Yes, Wahaya, it will protect me until you return. One day, I will tie it around the neck of its rightful owner.”

Tyoga tied the amulet around his neck. He turned and took two steps to resume his hunt for the Shawnee braves before stopping in his tracks. He pivoted toward the cave, and entered the dark cavern. He emerged moments later with the red blanket draped over his shoulder, and tied to the opposite side of his waist sash.

Standing to his full height, he stretched out his mighty arms and felt them swell with the power of the earth and sky.

Time seemed to stop as his tomorrow had already come and gone. Listening to nothing at all, he heard every sound. Seeing nothing but blackness, the world was illuminated in stark and frightening detail.

He turned to the east and ran toward his destiny.

Chapter 38

Savage Retribution

R
enewing his pursuit of the Shawnee, Tyoga ran at full speed along the uneven trail until he came to the spot under the willow tree where he had seen them before Wahaya beckoned him back to the cave.

Instead of doubling back as Tyoga had suspected they would, the war party had forged ahead thinking that he and Walks Alone were still out ahead of them. Not only didn’t they realize that they were no longer chasing anyone at all, but they had no idea that they had become the hunted.

Tyoga knew this area well. He and Tes Qua had spent many days in their youth exploring the pristine acreage from the safety of their secret hollow. About a half a mile up the trail, the path veered sharply to the north and descended precipitously to the cut of Dobson’s Run.

Leaving the trail, he dove into the woods and headed north. Moving silently through the thicket, the shortcut made it easy for him to flank the war party and beat them by ten minutes to the spot where the path crossed Dobson’s Run. While well concealed in the underbrush and reeds, he prepared himself for the first murderous deed.

Tyoga was tired, hungry, and filled with an assassin’s contempt born of loss, entrapment, and desperation. He was dirty and smelled of smoke, sweat, and the musky reminders of Sunlie’s final goodbye. He had not shaved in over a week and his eyes had long since abandoned any pretense of their docile hazel hue. He had surrendered to the sizzling amber glow that annihilated reason, steeled resolve, and obliterated the ethical lines that separate the moral discipline of human sensibility and the savage ferocity of animal instinct to protect and defend.

Tyoga Weathersby was gone.

The transformation was complete.

What was there had vanished, replaced with an animal deliberateness filled with inhuman intent. Indifferent to death. Frightening. He would do what had to be done with ruthless abandon.

He heard the mocassined feet approaching from the south well before they came into view.

When they passed by him not an arms length away, he stopped breathing and froze stone still. He lay in wait like the bear trap that had ensnared his friend all those years ago. Silent. Cold. Cocked. Lethal. His massive arms were engorged with blood in anticipation of the strike.

The next brave in the line placed his foot on the first stepping stone to cross the Run when Tyoga struck. Lifting the young man completely off the ground with his left arm, he covered the brave’s mouth with his right hand before he could cry out. Laying the brave on his back, and placing his knee in his chest, Tyoga returned the terror in the man’s eyes with the cold blank gaze of an alpha predator. As easily as filleting a roe-filled shad, Tyoga slit the warrior’s throat from ear to ear with a single stroke of his butchering blade.

The clear, cool water in Dobson’s Run turned a pinkish brown as it continued its journey to the sea.

Tyoga glanced over the swaying tops of the tall reeds across the creek to see if he had been discovered.

The last warrior in the line did not turn around or give any sign that he had heard the silent murder of his friend.

In a single deer-like bound, Tyoga cleared the width of the Run and landed silently on the balls of his feet. Taking two quick quiet steps, he placed his hulking hand over the mouth of the warrior in the back of the line, and slid the razor edge of his knife along the soft spongy tissue of the young man’s jaw line. The war party kept moving forward without noticing the loss of their two companions.

Tyoga was dragging the body of the second warrior he had killed across the creek when he heard the others in the party call the names of their missing friends.

“Sheshotahey
(Looks Within)
. Entowata
(Bull Song)
. Eh ta eeta wa lo?”

Receiving no reply, the eldest in the group asked, “Talking Bear, weren’t they walking behind you?

“Yes, River Claw, they were right behind me.”

“Did you not hear anything?”

“No, Ginsata. I heard nothing.”

“What shall we do, River Claw? Do you want me and Winged Bear to go look for them?”

“Nay ya. They will catch up. Eh ta ho.”

Searching for any sign of Tyoga and Walks Alone, the Shawnee braves continued on until noon. They made camp in a clearing next to a spring surrounded by large willow trees. They had covered about eighteen miles since they had begun chasing Tyoga and Walks Alone before dawn.

They were tired and hungry.

“We will make camp here,” River Claw announced to his men. “We will eat and rest. We will resume our hunt tomorrow when Looks Within and Bull Song have rejoined us. If they have not returned by nightfall, we will build a great fire so that they can find their way to us in the dark. Stay together. Do not leave camp for any reason. When it gets dark, stay within the light of the fire. Wahaya may be near. ”

“River Claw,” Talking Bear protested, “let me circle back to look for Bull Song and Looks Within. I will take Yellow Stone with me and we will not go far.”

“Talking Bear, it is a brave thing that you ask to do,” River Claw responded looking at the others to reinforce his message with affirming nods. “But I have seen many days more than you in the woods. The trees are telling me that this is a time to stay close to camp. These things you do not know now. But you will learn.”

“I do hope to know what you know and to hear what you hear someday, River Claw. But now my friends are missing and all that I hear is the wind through the pines. Let me go find our friends, your nephew.”

“My son,” River Claw replied, “you have heard of the legend of Tyoga Weathersby. I have seen your eyes as I have told the tale many times around my lodge fire. You cannot understand the power of his magic. He is neither man, nor beast, but something else that we cannot know. We all will stay here in camp. That is my final word.”

Like the wolf that singles out a victim from a roaming herd before making the kill, Tyoga had already picked out his next two victims. He watched and waited throughout the evening hours. When the Shawnee fell asleep, he silently rose to his feet.

The war party awoke to a scene of utter horror.

Looks Within and Bull Song were swinging in the morning breeze from the trees surrounding their campsite alongside the mutilated bodies of two additional braves murdered in the night. The Braves had been disemboweled, their entrails dangling from their swaying corpses.

Blood, mucous, and feces pooled to make a putrid soup on the ground below their bodies.

When the first Shawnee brave awoke to relieve himself before the sun had risen, his horrific screams alerted the others to the carnage that surrounded the camp.

Springing from their blankets in the pre-dawn chill, the remaining members of the party ran for their lives from the hellish sight. They left behind their provisions, their clothes, and most of their weapons.

Like a panicked herd stampeding in fear, their frantic flight worked to Tyoga’s distinct advantage. He was already waiting for them as they entered an open meadow.

After Tyoga hung and mutilated the bodies of the four dead Shawnee, he had plenty of time to get far ahead of the frightened five remaining young men who were now frantically trying to make their way back to South Fork. Lying on his back in the tall grass surrounding the meadow, Tyoga casually plucked a long stemmed blade of grass that was topped by a heavily laden seedpod and absent-mindedly stuck it in his mouth. Thinking of Sunlei, he wondered if Walks Alone had delivered her to Lone Bear’s family safely. He wished his best friend Tes Qua were by his side. He thought about the night that he had defended Tes Qua’s life by battling the marauding Runion pack while his defenseless friend was caught in the massive jaws of the bear trap.

Furrowing his brow while he chewed on the grass, he considered how much like the trap he had become. While the bear trap that imprisoned Tes Qua had retained its size, shape, form and function, its intent was magically transformed by circumstance from a weapon of destruction into an implement of protection to secure Tes Qua’s foot and ankle in place, protecting it from further harm.

Like the trap, Tyoga recognized that he had changed, too. His transformation had been completely in reverse. The gentle young man who battled so courageously to preserve his friend’s life and struggled through the night to get him safely home, now lay in wait to murder terrified young men fighting to accomplish the same goal for which he had once so dearly fought.

The recognition did not deter his purpose.

Hearing the war party running from the protection of the woods and into the north end of the open meadow, he picked up the bow and arrows he had taken from their campsite, and repositioned himself to get a better shot.

The flight of the arrow pierced the morning shadows with a menacing
“zzzzztttttttt”
, before the first brave silently dropped to his knees. So true was the shot that the arrow punctured his voice box and cleanly severed his jugular vein.

The horrific sight of their friend wildly clutching at the blood spurting from his neck and mouth sent the remaining braves scattering in a panic-stricken canter for their lives.

The second Shawnee fell with an arrow through his heart.

The two running behind him fell over his lifeless corpse. They picked themselves up off the ground and followed River Claw into the protective cover of a shallow ravine.

As they stumbled to the bottom of the gulch, they found the elder’s body lying belly down in the tall grass. They paused only long enough to turn him over to check for signs of life. They jumped back at the horror before their eyes.

Rather than being scalped, their leader’s face had been completely removed from his skull. While the practice of removing the scalp was accepted as a keepsake that honored a fallen enemy’s courage in battle, removal of a warrior’s forehead, nose, cheeks, lips and chin was seen as defilement beyond contempt.

Tyoga dropped the final two warriors where they stood even before they had the chance to recover from the abomination that had paralyzed them in place.

Strolling from the shadows, Tyoga pushed at the lifeless bodies with his foot. Sitting down in their midst, he slipped off his right mocassin and shook out an annoying pebble. Rubbing the back of his neck, he stretched out his lower back and felt the blood drain away from his engorged and tired muscles.